Blood
by theAsh0
Summary: Katara end-servies dark character study. What a fool she had been. Blood bending? That was just the start of things.


**End series Katara character study. I saw something like this a while ago here, but I'd already written most of it so decided to finish. R&R**

**0000~0000**

Once, long before Katara had grown and matured into the woman she was today, she had thrown a fit. – Long ago? But it was _only months. _Still, it might as well have been a lifetime.

On that day, she ridiculed the traditions and customs of the Northern water tribe, and told them they were backward fools for not teaching their women-benders to fight with water.

On that day, she challenged the leading master of the Tribe and impressed him into teaching her.

On that day, she quite possibly changed the fate of many young aspiring female benders, opening a different path to them; offering them freedom to choose their destiny.

What a _fool_ she had been.

Back then, she had only a rudimentary understanding of healing, and very few fighting techniques. Learning new techniques she could use in battle had been so enthralling and new, for a long time learning kept her mind firmly occupied. For Katara was an apt study, quick and intelligent. With an ingrained love of knowledge.

But as time went by, and more understanding came to her slowly, surely, the enormity of her error became impressed on the young water bender:

Healing and offensive techniques should _never _be learned by the same person.

Hama had brought the point home. And yet, at the same time, that poor, bitter woman had known noting- _nothing _at all.

As appalled as Katara had been by Hama's revelation at the time, the fact remained that the old, bitter woman had simply lifted the tip of veil covering many, many forbidden knowledge. Time and circumstance had forced Katara to the whole truth: water _was_ life. And, when the young girl had been forced to heal the Avatar, to truly feel the water inside his body to save his life, things had clicked in her head. Literally: like a drum's beat.

By the time Katara had realized that beat of in-out, push-pull was the thrumming of water in her own veins, many others had joined that beat: The slosh of water from stomach and to bladder, the movement in her bowels; a slow but steady pace from her lymph systems, even the feel of water inside her bones. Not to mention the answering beats of all life in her vicinity.

Blood bending? That was just the _start _of things.

Oh, Katara never touched it; never went near those currents inside the body. She feared the very thought. But that did not change the fact that they were right there, within her reach: that she could make out those paths of water coursing through veins and static in sinews as clear as had she _seen_ them through skin. And the fact made it brutally clear why Aang; why the Avatar did not, and would never posses the power of healing with water.

The Avatar had to preserve balance, had to keep peace. As such, he was a creature of war. And thus, should _neve_r be taught the secrets the body held.

It was a small comfort that Aang would never be subject to this particular horror: the sensation of walking on eggs, when only a small misstep could cause the deaths of many.

Katara was a good girl - she was often telling herself that. And Aang was an even better person. Which, not even counting the fact that he was Avatar, made it a good thing he was always at her side, _keeping_ her good.

Because staying good was hard.

So hard, because killing would – the way Katara now saw an enemy – be so _incredibly easy._

It was, in all honestly, quite natural for a bender to believe his element was superior to others, but when it came to ingenious ways to kill a man, Katara was quite convinced no element would provide more possibilities than water. Yes, in a way, they should all be happy it was the fire benders that had waged rampant war against the world. That, when a man was put to torture, that it was either by the old ways, by fire, or – because the earth kingdoms hardly had hands clear of blood – by earth.

Oh, fire could burn you; perhaps there were even ways to do it from the inside out. Air, no doubt could steal the breath out of a man's lunges and leave him dying a miserable death. And earth; she had seen what the Dai Li did to a person's mind.

Still, how could _any_ of these elements hold a candle to a power that could crystallize the blood, turning it into sharp knifes that cut through veins? Leaving it up to the bender´s precision to drown the subject in his own blood, or turn half his brain into useless sludge and leave a gibbering half-wit? When she could feel the water in a man's stomach, the watery mush in his entrails and knew it would take only a flick of her wrist to turn it all to knives of icy glass? When she could only wonder what would happen if she ever pulled the water from the very bones and joints; what form of hellish rheumatism the act would cause?

So, as Katara watches bags of water that _begged _her to pull at them dance around her in oblivion day after day. She could only come to one conclusion: the Northern water-tribe's customs had been _right all along_. And, if their gender-bias had been wrong and out-dated, it had simply been from the misconception grown from hundred years of the women being the healers, and men the fighters.

Katara considered as she watched friends and enemies alike, looking at all the easy ways their bodies could fall apart at her bidding: if one was to fight and be defeated by a water bender, if one found himself at the mercy of such as them, it was probably far, far better if that bender was a man.

Women, whatever master Pakku might have thought, were _never kind._


End file.
